Mike Burke: Yo-yo was one thing he could never master

The Republican fileJack V. Finn, co-owner of the A2Z Science & Nature Store along with his wife Priscilla R. Finn, stands in front of a Yo-Yo School session.

One thing I could never master (among the many things, I should say) was the yo-yo.

Yes, the yo-yo.

I knew guys who could make a yo-yo “sleep and walk,” “go around the world” and all that stuff. But, me? No way.

Every year, I recall it was at the beginning of school, the new yo-yos would come out for sale.

Some were inexpensive, about a buck or so, and some were extravagant. I remember one that looked like it had diamonds on the sides, but they weren’t really diamonds.

I bought a few in my day and tried very hard to master the experience.

I failed. Miserably.

If I tried to make it “sleep,” the string got all gnarled up. If I tried to “go around the world” with it, I usually hit myself in the head or the yo-yo came off the string and nearly broke a window in the house. My mother saw that and immediately banned yo-yos. My brother was pretty good at it, better than I, but he was no expert either.

And, if I remember correctly, it was a “guy thing” and no girls were involved. These days, I’m sure there are plenty of girls who are probably champs, but not in my day.

They tell me the yo-yo has been around as a toy forever, that the ancient Greeks had them and only dolls are older as playthings. That’s probably true.

The yo-yo was made popular back in the 1920s when a man from the Philippines named Pedro Flores brought it to the U.S. A man named Duncan, whose company is still the predominant maker name I believe, took it from there, and the craze mounted over the years.

You see, I have not-so-good hand-eye coordination and being good at a yo-yo requires that. So that’s what left me out.

I remember marveling at others in the school yard as they showed off their skills, and I remember the nuns confiscating more than one yo-yo, calling it a “tool of the devil, distracting one from the process of learning.”

So I stuck with my baseball cards; they required very little dexterity in flipping. I let the wise guys show off their yo-yo skills. 

Michael J. Burke, of Holyoke, is retired from The Republican. He can be reached at 
ekrubm@verizon.net 